In 1603, Shah Abbas presented a carpet with inwoven gold and silver threads to the Venetian doge Marino Grimani. European noblemen began ordering carpets directly from the manufactures of Isfahan and Kashan, whose weavers were willing to weave specific designs, like European coats of arms, into the commissioned peces. Their acquisition was sometimes meticulously documented: In 1601, the Armenian Sefer Muratowicz was sent to Kashan by the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa in order to commission 8 carpets with the Polish royal court of arms to be inwoven. The Kashan weavers did so, and on 12 September 1602 Muratowicz presented the carpets to the Polish king, and the bill to the treasurer of the crown.
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Representative Safavid carpets made of silk with inwoven gold and silver threads were erroneously believed by Western art historians to be of Polish manufacture. Although the error was corrected, carpets of this type retained the name of "Polish" or "Polonaise" carpets. The more appropriate type name of "Shah Abbas" carpets was suggested by Kurt Erdmann.
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Rugs were produced in the court manufactures as special commissions or gifts (some carpets included inwoven European coats of arms). Their elaborate design required a division of work between an artist who created a design plan (termed “cartoon”) on paper, and a weaver who was given the plan for execution on the loom. Thus, artist and weaver were separated. Their appearance in Persian book illuminations and miniatures as well as in European paintings provides material for their dating by using the “terminus ante quem” approach.
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Famous was the "Winter Carpet", also known as "Khosrau's Spring" (Spring Season Carpet قالى بهارستان) of Khosrau Anushirvan, designed to make him forget winter in its spring and summer scenes: flowers and fruits made of inwoven rubies and diamonds grew, in this carpet, beside walks of silver and brooks of pearls traced on a ground of gold. Harun al-Rashid prided himself on a spacious Sasanian rug thickly studded with jewelry. Persians wrote love poems about their rugs. Studies on Sasanian remains show over 100 types of crowns being worn by Sasanian kings.
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The literary structure of the narrative shows that Severus had in his mind principally readers on the same level of culture with himself. He was anxious to show that sacred history might be presented in a form which lovers of Sallust and Tacitus could appreciate and enjoy. The style is lucid and almost classical. Though phrases and even sentences from many classical authors are inwoven here and there, the narrative flows easily, with no trace of the jolts and jerks which offend us in almost every line of an imitator of the classics like Sidonius.
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Carpets with prayer rug design show elaborate vase-and-flowers arrangements flanked by cypress trees, another feature of Mughal art, also seen in architectural ornaments of Mughal period buildings like the Taj Mahal. Exact dating of Mughal period carpets is difficult, since few examples have inwoven dates. Rugs were woven in Agra, Lahore, and Fatehpur Sikri. With the decline of the Mughal Empire, by the late nineteenth century, carpet weaving in India had also declined to an extent that the British colonial administration decided to set up factories, sometimes in jails, to produce carpets for export.
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From the 1870s onwards, the Ottoman court manufactures also produced silk-piled rugs, sometimes with inwoven threads of gold or silver, but the traditional material of the majority of Anatolian rugs was hand-spun, naturally-dyed wool. In Europe, Anatolian rugs were frequently depicted in Renaissance paintings, often in a context of dignity, prestige and luxury. Political contacts and trade intensified between Western Europe and the Islamic world after the 13th century AD. When direct trade was established with the Ottoman Empire during the 14th century, all kinds of carpets were at first indiscriminately given the trade name of "Turkish" carpets, regardless of their actual place of manufacture. Since the late nineteenth century, oriental rugs have been subject to art historic and scientific interest in the Western world.
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As some carpets like the Ardabil carpets have inwoven inscriptions including dates, scientific efforts to categorize and date Safavid rugs start from them: The AH year of 946 corresponds to AD 1539–1540, which dates the Ardabil carpet to the reign of Shah Tahmasp, who donated the carpet to the shrine of Shaykh Safi-ad-din Ardabili in Ardabil, who is regarded as the spiritual father of the Safavid dynasty. Another inscription can be seen on the "Hunting Carpet", now at the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan, which dates the carpet to 949 AH/AD 1542–3: Shah 'Abbas I. embassy to Venice, by Carlo Caliari, 1595. Doge's palace, Venice The number of sources for more precise dating and the attribution of provenience increase during the 17th century. Safavid carpets were presented as diplomatic gifts to European cities and states, as diplomatic relations intensified.
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